18

NOT BY THE HAIR ON MY CHINNY CHIN CHIN

I woke up on the forest floor, surrounded by the smell of frying bacon and a nimbus of dried blood splatter and shed fur. A lot of the blood and fur were mine. Other than being slightly cold, my body wasn’t in any kind of pain, though. Neither was my mind. I felt calm and relaxed.

There was only one other person in the campsite next to me, a tall and heavily muscled fellow with a trim brown beard. He was clad in jeans and green flannel, crouched next to a campfire where the bacon was frying on a large pan set on a foldable grill. The top of the grill was wrapped in aluminum foil to provide a flat surface, and peanut butter sandwiches were toasting on its outer edges. A stack of paper plates and two cartons of eggs were on the ground next to it.

The man proceeded to place strips of bacon on paper plates, breaking the eggs and frying them directly in the bacon grease left over in the pan, methodically stopping to remove and replace the peanut butter sandwiches as he did so. I’d never had a toasted peanut butter sandwich before, but they smelled good.

My clothes had been placed on the ground next to me, still folded. I got up and unhurriedly began to put them on.

“You’ve been sleeping for almost two days,” the man observed. “That’s a sign that you’re not fully integrated.”

Was that why I was so relaxed? No, the calm and peace I felt was odd under the circumstances, but that didn’t particularly alarm me, either.

“It looks like I was in a hell of a fight,” I commented, gesturing at the signs of struggle.

“You were,” the man agreed pleasantly. “It took a long time for you to submit.”

“Submit?” I repeated softly.

“As a wolf.” Now that I could see his face, I saw that it was pockmarked around the edges of the beard, ravaged by something harsher than acne. His head was square, his nose blunt and broad, his eyes a dark hazel green. He was an ugly man, but some people refuse to be uncharismatic despite their looks. “You finally joined us rather than be torn apart. Sit.”

Submit, my ass. I buttoned my jeans. “If that’s a dog command, you’d better be ready for round two.”

He laughed. “It’s an invitation.”

I sat. It made it easier to pull on my socks and shoes.

He shoveled some eggs on to a plate full of bacon and passed me a fork to go with them. “Try the toasted peanut butter. It’s good.”

I was starving. Who cared if it was good or not? We ate quietly for a time.

“Is it normal for the wolf leader to give food to someone he considers a subordinate?” I eventually asked.

He chewed over his response, literally and figuratively. “This is a human ceremony, host to guest. We came to terms as wolves, but like I said, you’re not fully integrated yet. Now I’m trying to reach the part of you that you think of as a man.”

“How do you think of it?” I was challenging him, but I was also genuinely curious.

“I don’t really make a distinction between wolf and human anymore. It’s all one to me.”

“Why am I getting breakfast in bed?” I asked. “You’re not going to tell me we made out, are you?”

He smiled. “I am courting you in a way, but not that way. I made breakfast for the rest of your paw while you were sleeping.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to help me make peace with the knights.”

I chuckled, then put my plate on the ground when the chortles kept coming and growing until I convulsed with laughter. It had been a tense couple of decades.

“I just… tried that… for myself.” I gasped between gales. “The knights told me… told me… to kill you.”

He smiled and offered me his hand. “Bernard. Bernard Wright. That’s Wright with a W.”

My laughter died down, and I gave him a pretty good stare. Both the man and his hand remained unshaken.

“John,” I said. “John Charming.”

“That’s a hell of a name,” he observed, taking his hand back.

“I didn’t choose it,” I said. “It chose me.”

“I made Bernard Wright up,” he confessed, then laughed. “My mate says I just like being right all the time, so I had it legally changed to Bernard B. Wright.”

I didn’t ask for his real name. In my world, you don’t. “I had a friend named Rong once. R-O-N-G. If he was here, you could be Wright and Rong.”

He chuckled. “Whereas you and I can be Wright and Charming. How often does that combination happen?”

I didn’t laugh. Instead, I clarified. “You want me to follow you.”

“Yes,” he said with no trace of awkwardness or apology.

“Would I get my own parking space?” I wondered. “Full dental?”

He laughed again. Well, he could afford to. The woods around us were teeming with his disciples. “Being in the Clan is like that line from Shakespeare. It is a wind that blows over flowers, both giving and taking.”

The line was from Twelfth Night, and it was actually about giving and “stealing.” And what the wind gave and stole from flowers was odor. The language is a little disturbing because we normally think of flowers as having aromas or scents or fragrances, not odor. The language from that scene describes beautiful things with ugly words because the character is afraid and emotionally conflicted. Orsino wants love, but he knows how easy and dangerous it is to give yourself to attractive things you want but don’t truly understand.

What? I’ve lived a long time and lived it alone, mostly, and I like to read, and I like Shakespeare. Fuck off.

“Why should I follow you?” I demanded.

“Because you need to belong to something larger than yourself. Everyone does.”

“Not good enough,” I said quietly.

“Then how about because we’re the good guys?”

“Everybody thinks they’re the good guys.”

He nodded as much to himself as to me. “Let’s start over. You seem like a man who likes to study history, yes?”

“I know my way around an epoch,” I said guardedly.

“Then you know that before the Nazis started putting Jews in concentration camps, they made all these rules that set the Jews apart but at the same time kept them from organizing or being powerful. Jews couldn’t hold any kind of political office. Jews couldn’t join the military. Jews couldn’t assemble in large groups. Jews had to wear yellow stars. And so on.”

I remained silent.

“Now look at the rules that the Knights Templar have laid down for supernatural beings. They won’t let us run for public office. They won’t let us join the military. They won’t let us assemble in large groups. They keep obsessive records of who we are and where we live, but they don’t want us to do anything that might reveal our true nature.”

“That’s cute, but there are some big differences between knights and Nazis too,” I argued. “For one thing, the knights didn’t lay down those rules. They didn’t even ask for their jobs. And the same geas that makes knights monitor supernaturals also keeps them from harming any magical beings who are staying below the radar. Knights could never try to commit genocide or put beings in concentration camps.”

He wasn’t impressed. “So knights can only be sadists and murderers to people who don’t follow their rules. Comforting.”

“Every word I just said is fact, not opinion,” I said. “I don’t care whether you find them comforting or not. You don’t have to tell me that there are bad knights or that they do bad things, but some of the rules knights enforce are good for everyone. How long do you think it would take some bastard offshoot of a djinn to blow his or her cover if they were allowed to become pro athletes in front of millions of viewers? And would it be ethical if they did? Military schedules are strictly enforced… how is a werewolf supposed to keep his or her existence a secret if they’re in a barracks or a trench with other soldiers when a full moon comes around, or if they grow back limbs that get blown off? Not to mention that this planet is already struggling with a massive overpopulation problem… how much worse would it be if the numbers of beings who live for thousands of years just kept multiplying and multiplying unchecked? And what do you think would happen to us supernatural beings if our existence did become known? Say what you want, but some rich asshat would have us on a dissecting table trying to figure out how to become immortal, or some general who wanted to make better soldiers. And scientists could experiment on our regenerating bodies for a long, long time.”

Yeah, I know that was a hell of speech, but this was something I’d thought about a lot. And I hadn’t even gone into the possibility of whole new levels of race discrimination and holy wars.

“That all might be true,” he said. “But part of the reason it is true is that knights have kept the supernatural community in a state of stasis for centuries. We’re in the exact same boat we were in eight hundred years ago. We’re not protected by the Pax any longer. We’re confined by it.”

“That’s not the knights’ fault,” I defended. “It was the Fae who made the Pax Arcana.”

“And the Fae are all about staying the same and preserving the status quo,” Bernard answered. “That’s why they had to leave. Humans need to change and adapt in order to survive, both as individuals and societies, and we are humans, John. Do you doubt that?”

“And what do you want to change?”

“The Pax Arcana is starting to break down, and we can’t be isolated and easy to pick off when it does.” Bernard’s eyes were agleam. “We need to have lawyers. We need to have PR specialists and media consultants and friends in law enforcement. We need safe houses and emergency funds and false identification papers. We need to have a plan, and we can’t do that unless we’re organized and able to communicate, and the knights won’t allow that. They see any large group of werewolves as an organized conspiracy and a threat.”

“So you began conspiring to organize in secret,” I noted. “And now you’re a threat to them.”

His smile was rueful. “That’s how it works.”

Yeah, life is full of irony. “You killed a lot of knights who stumbled onto warning signs of what you were up to.”

“I killed them before they could kill me or mine.” He smiled again, but this time there wasn’t anything good-natured about it. “This is about the survival of our kind, and not just our physical survival, either. It’s our identity at stake. Our soul. We’re wolves. We were never meant to be herded like sheep.”

“But you said you wanted me to make peace with the knights,” I reminded him. “Not war.”

“Don’t you want to live in peace with the knights, John Charming?” he asked softly.

I didn’t answer.

“And how is that working out for you?”

That was a little too close to a nerve cluster. “You just attacked a lodge where there were a lot of important knights. They’re going to retaliate, and hard.”

Bernard held his palms out in a way that both included me and indicated a lack of options. “Their leaders have been trying to identify and kill me for years. Let them have a taste of what that’s like. And you’re werewolf business.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. A rush of pride, gratitude, panic, and angry denial washed over me. Sig. I forced myself to focus. “So where do things stand now?”

“The knights have been assassinating, imprisoning, and torturing us.” Bernard’s voice was no longer relaxed. “And yes, we have been doing the same to them. I have told them to get out of Wisconsin. All of them. Their families. Their informants.”

“To go with that Jewish comparison, you’re trying to create a werewolf Israel in the middle of the United States,” I commented.

“Suppose I am?” he growled.

“How’s that working out for you?”

He didn’t like that a bit.

“The difference between you and me,” Bernard snapped, “is that I have people I care about and who care about me. I can’t just run away and hide and pout.”

My throat was tight. “Can I?”

He regarded me skeptically. “Do you really want to leave?”

“I need to have a choice,” I said.

He stood up then. “You’re fighting for a choice. I’m fighting for a chance.”

I remained crouched down. It wasn’t an animal dominance thing. I still had food on my plate. “I’m here. Not killing anyone. Doing the initiation thing and keeping a promise someone else made to you. Right now, that’s the best you’re going to get.”

“You’ve been fighting your wolf for a long time, John.” Bernard’s tone and body language had a strange nuance, almost parental. “Forget peace with the knights for a minute. If you’re ever going to have peace with yourself, you need to start listening to the wolf. That part of yourself has needs, and you’ve been starving it for a long time.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” I picked my plate up again and resumed eating. “That’s why I need one now.”

Bernard walked off. He wasn’t being rude or angry. He wasn’t saying good-bye. We were done for the moment. Not too long ago, it would have freaked me out that I understood all of that without a word being uttered. I would have weighed and sifted and questioned that understanding suspiciously, trying to figure out what dark shadowy region of my brain the knowledge lurked in.

Now, I kind of liked the idea of being among people who just understood certain things.